The good and the bad of Gaming online (Destiny:Part 1)

2015-01-07

I had a thought a few days ago while I was at work. I don’t want to do this again was the only answer that I could think of as far as the subject matter. Recently I had been spending my time after work trying to grinding over and over in a game, Destiny, but only having the repeat result of nothing to show for it. I began to wonder why my lack of interest in the game has increased even more lately. I know that, for the most part, the story line is horrible. Anytime an NPC (Non-playable character) tells you they don’t have time to even tell you why they don’t have time is a poor excuse for even trying to make a story worth playing. But story aside I realized that I was not alone in my gaming issue. I too had fallen to a similar block of not caring about what I was doing. Usually I show a great passion for things I do in my average every day life. I work hard to get the best result, I watch after my co-workers because I care for them and their safety as much as my own and I strive for the best that I can bring. That transfers over into gaming which is my main method of phasing out and relaxing. So why is it, other than 2014 being a horrible year for games, that I am finding myself growing bored and disinterested with gaming? I analyzed and broke down my main stale bread and bland butter, Destiny, to try to figure out what I was missing and uncovered much.

Get your a$$ Mars…Grinding again and again and again

Destiny has a level cap of twenty so while you are a fledgling little guardian who is working their way into a stronger character build you are enjoying the experience. You evolve into a character who can cut a swath of destruction on several different areas of Earth, The Moon, Venus and Mars. Blood thirsty enemies that once laughed at your attempts to even try to scratch their armor fall before the might of your guns and skills. But the catch to the whole thing is that your level only increases after twenty by gathering light.

No I’m not talking about collecting candles or flashlights or even gathering light bugs in jars. What I mean by light is that there is a rating system that adds the amount of light you have by the type of armor you obtain; White armor is common, green is uncommon, blue rare, purple legendary and finally yellow being exotic. Armor does not begin to get a light rating until you gather blue pieces which will give you enough to get into the twenty-one area. The only way to get into the higher levels is to obtain the legendary armor and while exotics are nice you can only equip one at a time. SO, how do you find all of these items? By grinding of course. Grinding is a common feature in some games that require you to level your character but there are usually more rewarding factors involved.

Diablo III (a favorite of mine and is my 2014 game of the year) is a well-known grinding game that had poor item find in the beginning because everything as far as rare items was pushed towards their auction house which ultimately hurt their game play. They learned that by turning down the amount percentage rate of finding unique items they could get players to actually spend in-game money and real, yes REAL money on digital items. Ultimately they did away with the auction house and made game play better. Grinders felt like their items made a difference in the game and that inspired them to want to strive to find better items in the for a better end/overall game experience. But Destiny, who has a similar parent company in the form of Activision, has issues seeing that. This company has their claws on a whole variety of games and that can seem kind of greedy to the average consumer. But it seems like, at least to me, Activision’s main staple is producing games they can grind out and copy content multiple times. Call of Duty is now their property and it features the same frame of design that they have utilized in their previous games. Kill streaks and rewards pepper the screen of the player that can kill the most leaving those who can’t make it into the double-digit scores hapless against the overkill of missiles, choppers, bombs and death planes. A scene that would make Michael Bay weep with happiness.

Destiny suffers from a lack of identity. It is a game that doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a shooter an RPG an exploration type game or a storytelling game? It’s almost as if they created that kid next door that wants to be seen with everyone so they do everything to try to become popular. In the end however their trying is for naught because very few want to spend time with them. Any interaction with the kid results in things happening that you don’t want to happen. Hangouts become boring and quickly become stale, their stories are always the same and just when you see something that could potentially change for the better it is always a let down. Destiny lets you down in the form of repeated stories, lack of content and lack of creativity towards the actual story itself. Then it becomes the bully and takes your lunch money or trades lunches with you, making you eat what it offers you. That lunch is in the form of its latest DLC entitled The Dark Below which doesn’t provide much content to the game and leaves most people not willing to pay out of the entire game as a whole.

There is much more to talk about but I’ll cover that in a later post. But for now, thank you for reading and hopefully you can start to see where the lack of interest comes from. Stay tuned for my future topics which I’ve posted down below and will activate as they become available. Any comments questions and feed back would be welcome.

And remember my readers

The rush is loud, so ride the lightning!

-War Child signing out

The social gamer vs. the hardcore gamer and how they find a perpendicular union